Coordinated Local Government Implementation of the Basics

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2020

Chesterfield County Government, in partnership with Chesterfield County Public Schools, developed a model for coordinated local government implementation of The Basics campaign. The Basics are five clusters of parenting and caregiving behaviors distilled from research by the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University that encompass most of what experts find is important for boosting cognitive and social-emotional development of children from birth to age three. Since eighty percent of brain growth occurs in the first three years of life, building critical foundations for cognitive and social emotional skills is key to increasing literacy rates in our communities. The Basics are fun, simple and free. The Basics movement aims to saturate the social ecology around each family and to engage the whole community, so that everyone knows the Basics and every parent or caregiver receives encouragement and support for using them. In Chesterfield County, twelve local government agencies, including the school system, worked collaboratively to promote The Basics through strategies including print materials, videos, media, social media, care giver education, parent workshops, playgroups, toolkits and 1:1 citizen interaction. Our 2019 implementation showed a 48% increase in awareness of the Basics among those in Chesterfield. The Chesterfield Basics implementation team works closely with a Greater Richmond Regional Basics steering committee which has promoted the Chesterfield implementation blueprint as a model for other local governments.